Ukraine’s Defense Ministry warned on Monday that Russia is planning to target critical infrastructure with massive cyberattacks, specifically the energy sector. These planned attacks are part of an effort to slow down Ukrainian counter offensives.
The ministry’s advisory said that the cyberattacks will also look to increase the effectiveness of Russia’s missile strike operations on electricity supply facilities primarily located in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine.
“The occupying command is convinced that this will slow down the offensive operations of the Ukrainian Defence Forces,” the ministry added in the advisory.
The agency also added that Russia intends to deploy more distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks targeting the critical infrastructure of Ukraine’s closest allies, which include Poland and the Baltic states.
Ukraine and its allies have been used for testing Russia’s cyber operations since the start of the war.
A Microsoft report from May revealed that Russia-backed threat actors have launched over 200 cyberattacks against Ukraine since the start of 2022. These cyberattacks include approximately 40 destructive ones that targeted the country’s government organizations and critical sectors.
However, in April, Ukraine said that it successfully stopped a Russian cyberattack that attempted to disrupt the country’s power grid. The attack looked to target computers that controlled an energy firm’s high-voltage substations.
Ukrainian officials said the hackers behind the attempted attack were affiliated with Russia’s military intelligence agency, GRU.
Additionally, Russia has been accused of targeting NATO members with cyberattacks, including Montenegro, Estonia, and Lithuania.
While Finland isn’t a NATO member, it was also recently hit with a cyberattack that targeted its parliament’s website. This attack overlapped with US President Joe Biden’s signed measure to admit Finland and Sweden into NATO.
The ministry’s advisory followed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent decision to call up around 300,000 military troops to fight in the war with Ukraine.